The State Department said Friday that the United States Agency for International Development was officially closing, in what could give a final blow to the besieged foreign aid agency.
The measure occurred several hours before a Federal Court of Appeals annuls the order of a lower Court that blocked Elon Musk and its Government Efficiency Department to dismantle USAID.
In a memorandum distributed on Friday to USAID employees and obtained by ABC News, Jeremy Lewin, the new deputy director of the agency and a former efficiency official of the Government Department, wrote that the State Department “intends to assume the responsibility of many of the functions of USAID and its continuous program.”
The State Department “will seek to withdraw the independent operation of the USAID” immediately and “evaluate” whether to hire an unknown number of officials to “assume the administration responsible for the remaining programming of life and the strategic help of USAID,” said the memorandum.
“This transfer will significantly improve efficiency, responsibility, uniformity and strategic impact on the delivery of foreign assistance programs, allowing our nation and president to speak with one voice in foreign affairs,” according to the Memo.
“It will also ignore the need for Useid to continue operating as an independent establishment,” said the memorandum.
As part of the movement, the memorandum said: “All non -statutory positions in USAID will be eliminated.”
Taxes are placed below the seal covered with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington, DC, on February 7, 2025.
Mandel and/AFP
Two weeks after a court ruled that the attempts to unilaterally dismantle USAID were probably unconstitutional, a panel of three judges in the United States Appeals Court for the 4th circuit remained in Friday’s ruling, discovering that the Trump administration will probably demonstrate that the lady’s effort to dismantle USAID did not violate the Constitution.
“While the role and actions of the defendants related to the USAID are not conventional, it is not necessarily the same as unconstitutional,” Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. wrote in a concurrent opinion.
Trump administration officials, including the Doge Group of Musk, have led a generalized effort to dismantle the agency saying thousands of employees, revoking funds for more than 80% of their programs and throwing their headquarters in Washington, DC.
The decision to completely dissolves a federal agency is expected to cause legal scrutiny, according to experts who said that such a measure would generally require the approval of Congress.
In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated that the administration was officially moving to Sunset Usaid and that foreign aid would now be officially administered by the State Department.
“Thanks to President Trump, this was wrong and fiscally irresponsible is over,” Rubio said in his statement. “We are reor
“We continue essential programs that save lives and make strategic investments that strengthen our partners and our own country,” Rubio said in his statement.
Trump administration critics say their efforts to annul the agency will paralyze US influence abroad and will have devastating effects for some of the most vulnerable populations in the world, which are based on funds from the United States for medical care, food and other basic needs.
The State Department also said that its leadership, together with the established USAID leadership, had notified Congress its intention to reorganize some USAID functions within the State Department before July 1 of this year.
The general impulse to eliminate USAID and the reduction of agency staff is being challenged in multiple judicial cases.
